Recent media trend-let: middle-aged people checking out social networking sites and writing bemusedly about their findings. But one oldish fogey actually has something interesting to say. In the new Atlantic VH1 exec and media deep-thinker Michael Hirschorn predicts that we're in a social networking bubble, and that even Myspace will crumble, or at least decline, despite the general sense that it's now ensconced in internet culture. Two central points: first, once the new-ness and open feeling of the site (which Hirschorn likens to "freshman year at college") wears off, users are left with functionality options that pretty much just replicate the internet as a whole. And second, MySpace phenoms (such as Tila Tequila) are getting wise to the notion that if they move their content off MySpace, they can actually monetize it, instead of essentially bequeathing their page-views to Newscorp.
It's an interesting, and persuasive, position. Everybody, put Hirschorn in your top eight! Or at least read the piece.
